Food & Farming

For the past three years, we have been publishing a biannual sister publication to In The Hills, called Food In The Hills. Reader feedback to the new magazine was gratifyingly enthusiastic, and we loved producing it. But it was more than anything a labour of love, and this year we have sadly ceased publication.

However, we remain in these pages deeply committed to local food. As Janet Horner said in an interview for this issue, local food represents nothing short of a “global wave” of a social movement. We concur. The matter of what we eat and where it comes from is a matter in which global and personal environmental, health and economic concerns converge – in the intimate setting of our own kitchens and communities.

In this issue, Nicola Ross takes stock of how far the local food movement has come over the past decade in the Headwaters region – and discovers that while there are still many challenges, local food culture has put down deep roots in our community and they are bound to nourish its continued growth.

Local agriculture also appears to have received an important boost with the purchase by Bonnefield Financial of the Highland properties in Melancthon. Tim Shuff interviews the investment firm’s president, Tom Eisenhauer, who offers a credible case, backed by financial analysis, for his company’s commitment to maintaining those embattled lands and their precious Honeywood silt loam as farmland.

While the Bonnefield model signals a dramatic shift in the future of the agricultural industry, Jack Hostrawser explores the changing dynamic in a much more personal way. He pays tribute to his grandfather, a lifelong Caledon farmer whose death five years ago marked the beginning of the end of an era, not just in a way of life but in a family’s private history.

In another farm-related story, Liza Sardi visits Everdale farm in Hillsburgh. It is now the Ontario site of an exciting national project that aims not only to collect and preserve diverse, regionally adapted, organic seeds, but to maintain them in a publicly accessible seed library to ensure their continued propagation – and by extension, the security of Canada’s food supply.

And, finally, because food is, as much as anything, just plain fun, Cecily Ross describes her adventures in sausage making – an experience she elevates to a metaphor for life.